Crab Spider Soldier power pool tuning suggestions

[Taveena]

Crab Spiders aren't, as a whole, in a bad spot to my knowledge, but at present the Crab Spider Soldier versions of abilities are often just worse than the Arachnos Soldier counterparts. One of the areas where this is most notable is in the animation times, with the Crab Backpack versions of abilities often taking 50% longer to use by comparison. While I admit to not knowing how fixable these issues are, if it is possible to speed up the animations as was done with the Auto Rifle rework, it would help a great deal, and my suggestions on the exact details are as follows.

Channelgun: Reduce animation time from 1.33s to 0.9s (to match Single Shot. I think it's probably fine to keep the accuracy at 1x as the Energy type is less commonly resisted.)
Slice: Increase damage scale to match Pummel (it presently deals exactly 60% of Pummel's damage, with the same recharge and animation.) EDIT: MISREAD THE POWER, SORRY. (Now I'd honestly suggest reducing Pummel's animation to match SLICE's.)
Longfang: Reduce animation time from 2s to 1s, increase defense debuff duration from 5s to 8s (the abilities are otherwise identical, so having Longfang be strictly worse is bizarre)
Omega Maneuver: Reduce recharge from 360s to 145s, increase damage to match other nukes (such as Fortunata's Psychic Wail)

As a sidenote, Bayonet's inordinately high damage compared to every other Crab Spider power isn't a balance problem, but if it WAS possible to have a mutually-exclusive Crab Spider equivalent that used the backpack, I'd personally enjoy being able to use all-backpack powers without the opportunity cost of leaving my most powerful melee attack on the table, but I digress. (Perhaps if Slice instead used the same stats as Bayonet?)

Thank you for reading.

Edited January 5 by Taveena
i can't read

[Rudra]

I think Channelgun's closest contemporary is Mace Beam. Same damage value, same damage type. Except Channelgun has better range and animation time, whereas Mace Beam has better accuracy.

 

36 minutes ago, Taveena said:

Slice: Increase damage scale to match Pummel (it presently deals exactly 60% of Pummel's damage, with the same recharge and animation.)

Slice has a 1 second animation to Pummel's 1.667 seconds. Slice is guaranteed to reduce the target's defense whereas Pummel has a 66% chance to stun. (Edit: Also, Slice and Pummel do the same damage. The difference is Pummel gets +37.0753 if kmeter is the source. Whatever that means.) (Edit again: And if you look at their damage per animation/cast, Slice has the better damage even with Pummel getting both damage values added [for that 60% value you are pointing out]. If you add in the recharge for the DPS? Slice gets even better.)

 

36 minutes ago, Taveena said:

Longfang: Reduce animation time from 2s to 1s, increase defense debuff duration from 5s to 8s (the abilities are otherwise identical, so having Longfang be strictly worse is bizarre)

Longfang does more damage to players than Burst, but the same damage to critters. Otherwise, you are correct.

 

36 minutes ago, Taveena said:

Omega Maneuver: Reduce recharge from 360s to 145s, increase damage to match other nukes (such as Fortunata's Psychic Wail)

Omega Maneuver includes 20 seconds of Mag 4 Taunt with a duration of 5 seconds before it explodes. (Edit again: So targets need some seriously high taunt resistance to not be taunted to the bomb until it explodes.) It does have its benefits compared to Psychic Wail. Including a 60 feet range to Psychic Wail's 0 feet range. And both have the Mag 3 stun.

Edited January 4 by Rudra

[Taveena]

Mace Beam can be compared to it, yes, but it's one that has exactly the same issue - it's just worse than Single Shot because of its long animation.
Omega Maneuver's low damage and incredibly long cooldown just aren't made up for by its crowd control aspect - it's unique, but it's also just so much weaker than other nukes. A better comparison as nukes go might be Blizzard, with its soft crowd control, delayed damage, and long range. But that has only a 170 second recharge, with even the Defender version dealing 241 damage to the Omega Maneuver's 167.  It's also only a 9 second stun compared to Psychic Wail's 13.  It is unique, but it could be unique and also universally useful, like most nukes.

But yeah, the Mace ranged attacks have the same issue where they're outclassed by the gun attacks and thus redundant out of the gate. I'd also like them to be buffed, but Mace attacks have much more of a cohesive melee identity with fewer dud powers - building a Bane Spider I felt like I felt more like I'd unlocked new, useful options. Building a Crab Spider, I felt like every single-target power in the primary pool was a trap option!

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Taveena said:

Omega Maneuver's low damage and incredibly long cooldown just aren't made up for by its crowd control aspect - it's unique, but it's also just so much weaker than other nukes. A better comparison as nukes go might be Blizzard, with its soft crowd control, delayed damage, and long range. But that has only a 170 second recharge, with even the Defender version dealing 241 damage to the Omega Maneuver's 167.  It's also only a 9 second stun compared to Psychic Wail's 13.  It is unique, but it could be unique and also universally useful, like most nukes.

Considering Blizzard and Inferno are the two most powerful nukes in the game? No, that is not a good comparison. If you compare Omega Maneuver to the median ability of Defender nukes? Omega Maneuver may have a longer recharge, but it also does more damage, has a taunt that keeps up to 10 targets (in a 10 feet radius) preoccupied with attacking it and not you for 5 seconds, and still has the 9 second Mag 3 stun (with apparently up to a Mag 5 stun against players) after the 5 second taunt for 14 seconds of targets not doing anything to you, at less than half the END cost of Defender or Blaster nukes. It is not in a bad spot. It isn't doing as much damage as a typical Blaster's nuke, but it also really shouldn't be either. And then you need to look at the other powers the Crab Spider gets to use with Omega Maneuvers. Crab Spiders get up to 6 pets before you go incarnate. And Omega Maneuver means those pets have 14 whole seconds to tear into the opposition without them fighting back just like you do.

 

Edit: And here's a reason why you shouldn't compare Omega Maneuver to Psychic Wail. Crab Spiders get 3 armor powers to the Fortunata's 0. (They get the same Tactical Training: and Combat Training: powers other than Vengeance, but Fortunatas get a very weak Hide power in the form of Mask Presence.) Crab Spiders are basically hybrid MM/Tank/Defender characters. Fortunatas are basically evasive Blasters. So the Fortunata's nuke should be more damaging.

 

Edited January 4 by Rudra
Edited to correct "sue" to "use".

[Taveena]

It's... just a bit odd that in exchange for having six times the recharge of Rain of Arrows, it's dealing only about 25% more, and what you get in exchange is 5 seconds of taunt and the risk of your teammates' Judgments killing them beforehand. Like... yes, it's unique and cool. It does not need a six minute base recharge.

[General Idiot]

10 hours ago, Rudra said:

(Edit: Also, Slice and Pummel do the same damage. The difference is Pummel gets +37.0753 if kmeter is the source. Whatever that means.)

The kmeter bit is the bane spider's critical hit from hide, which they can also get on the two wolf spider melee attacks. There's no way for a crab spider to activate that extra damage as they lack the cloaking device power that enables it. But since it's the same power the effect is still there in the code even though it'll never trigger.

 

If OP is including that extra damage in their math when asking for buffs to equivalent Crab powers, they shouldn't be. Without it included, Pummel and Slice do the exact same amount of damage in PvE. In PvP Pummel does slightly more but that's because animation times are a factor in PvP balance (they're not in PvE) and Pummel has a slower animation.

 

Bayonet meanwhile has no direct equivalent in the Crab Spider powers (and there's certainly room to create one for the more melee focused crabs out there) but it does do slightly less damage than the closest thing in Arm Lash, which has a 10 second recharge to Bayonet's 8 and does correspondingly more damage. There's nothing terribly unbalanced here.

Edited January 4 by General Idiot

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, General Idiot said:

The kmeter bit is the bane spider's critical hit from hide, which they can also get on the two wolf spider melee attacks. There's no way for a crab spider to activate that extra damage as they lack the cloaking device power that enables it. But since it's the same power the effect is still there in the code even though it'll never trigger.

 

If OP is including that extra damage in their math when asking for buffs to equivalent Crab powers, they shouldn't be. Without it included, Pummel and Slice do the exact same amount of damage in PvE. In PvP Pummel does slightly more but that's because animation times are a factor in PvP balance (they're not in PvE) and Pummel has a slower animation.

 

Bayonet meanwhile has no direct equivalent in the Crab Spider powers (and there's certainly room to create one for the more melee focused crabs out there) but it does do slightly less damage than the closest thing in Arm Lash, which has a 10 second recharge to Bayonet's 8 and does correspondingly more damage. There's nothing terribly unbalanced here.

Thanks for the explanation.

[Rudra]

6 hours ago, Taveena said:

It's... just a bit odd that in exchange for having six times the recharge of Rain of Arrows, it's dealing only about 25% more, and what you get in exchange is 5 seconds of taunt and the risk of your teammates' Judgments killing them beforehand. Like... yes, it's unique and cool. It does not need a six minute base recharge.

Considering the current meta is to out-spam your teammates' nukes and Judgements with your own to fast clear spawns before anything else can happen or be done? I personally don't view that as a valid argument. It is a perfectly solid power as a solo player and it is still perfectly usable when the team runs into something they can't just insta-nuke into oblivion. Would I complain if the recharge on Omega Maneuver was reduced? Not in the slightest. I just don't see a good reason to do so when you add in the 6 pets Crab Spiders can get plus their own attacks and their near Tanker/Brute level caps for resists.

[Taveena]

13 hours ago, General Idiot said:

If OP is including that extra damage in their math when asking for buffs to equivalent Crab powers, they shouldn't be. Without it included, Pummel and Slice do the exact same amount of damage in PvE. In PvP Pummel does slightly more but that's because animation times are a factor in PvP balance (they're not in PvE) and Pummel has a slower animation.

 

Bayonet meanwhile has no direct equivalent in the Crab Spider powers (and there's certainly room to create one for the more melee focused crabs out there) but it does do slightly less damage than the closest thing in Arm Lash, which has a 10 second recharge to Bayonet's 8 and does correspondingly more damage. There's nothing terribly unbalanced here.

Yeah, I wasn't including the crit damage, this was baseline non-hidden damage for reference. If a Bayonet equivilent were added, I'd want it to be mutually exclusive with actual-factual Bayonet - basically, I'd like it if melee crabs could look a little more like the NPCs in practice instead of having to switch to a bayonet briefly. Why graft these arms to ourselves when using a gun is so much better?

 

(Also believe it or not this is the part I'm actually more concerned about; the Omega Maneuver discussions are mostly based on discussions with other Crabs about what's optimal, while the arm attacks are a personal bedbug of mine!)
 

 

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Considering the current meta is to out-spam your teammates' nukes and Judgements with your own to fast clear spawns before anything else can happen or be done? I personally don't view that as a valid argument. It is a perfectly solid power as a solo player and it is still perfectly usable when the team runs into something they can't just insta-nuke into oblivion. Would I complain if the recharge on Omega Maneuver was reduced? Not in the slightest. I just don't see a good reason to do so when you add in the 6 pets Crab Spiders can get plus their own attacks and their near Tanker/Brute level caps for resists.

I... disagree, I guess? If the meta is going to be 60-170 second Extreme damage nuke spam, then Omega Maneuver should probably be part of that meta, Justifying a build slot on something you can only use every 6 minutes is... yeah, you CAN do it, you can have fun doing it, but we have limited enhancement slots and every power choice is precious. Spending a power slot on something with AT MOST 17 seconds uptime (counting the stun + taunt) every 72 seconds is really, really below par. Fortunatas have Aura of Confusion as another point of comparison for a long-cooldown hard control that also does damage, and it's got two-thirds the recharge and begins doing its damage instantly, while just able to become functionally permanent with capped recharge and EDR'd duration.

So. Yeah, I feel like it deserves to be viable in groups as well as solo, and I don't think it's exactly bad for Crabs to get a buff for solo play either?

(Sorry for editing this post while you were typing, I hit enter too soon.)

Edited January 5 by Taveena
Hit enter too soon, oops.

[Rudra]

6 minutes ago, Taveena said:

Yeah, I wasn't including the crit damage, this was baseline non-hidden damage for reference.

It looks like you are. Your comment is that Pummel does more damage than Slice, but it doesn't except from Cloaking Device. If you are using Mids, turn off Conditioning/Hidden, and the damage is the same giving Slice the advantage for having a 1 second animation to Pummel's 1.667 second animation.

[Taveena]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

It looks like you are. Your comment is that Pummel does more damage than Slice, but it doesn't except from Cloaking Device. If you are using Mids, turn off Conditioning/Hidden, and the damage is the same giving Slice the advantage for having a 1 second animation to Pummel's 1.667 second animation.

... Frig, you're right, I'm dumb. Thanks for catching it, will remove it from original post.

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, Taveena said:

... Frig, you're right, I'm dumb. Thanks for catching it, will remove it from original post.

Thank @General Idiot. If not for his/her/their explanation, I wouldn't have thought about it.

[General Idiot]

Looking more closely at Bayonet though you're not wrong there, it does substantially more damage than I thought at first because it has a damage over time effect as well. Presumably this is considered balanced as a secondary effect, the same as how fire powers usually do more damage because they have DoT while other sets get a slow or defense debuff or some such. All the crab melee powers have -def attached. I could see adding a bayonet equivalent for crabs with the same bleed effect but no -def perhaps.

 

Notably the bane spider does have an 8 second recharge melee power and it does almost the same total damage as bayonet, though again some of that is a secondary damage over time effect that all the bane mace melee powers have.

 

Personally if it were up to me I wouldn't add another melee attack, instead I'd add a third ranged attack to give crabs more than just the two single target ranged powers since they're meant to be the more ranged focused side while banes are melee.